Trailers are commonly used for the transportation of bulk aggregate material such as gravel, stone, grain, coal, and the like. Generally, a trailer includes a chassis mounted on a wheeled suspension with wheels for rollably driving the chassis on the ground, and a rigid container carried by the chassis. The rigid container comprises a floor, opposing sidewalls, a front wall, and a rear gate which may be opened for loading/unloading bulk materials into the container. The container may include a roof, or may include a top opening for loading of bulk materials into the container. Some trailers include moving or walking floors for unloading the bulk materials transported by the trailer. In order to empty the container, some trailers include a plow which cooperates with the moving floor to urge or push bulk material contained in the container toward and out of a rear-facing opening of the container, and in this manner the container may be unloaded and emptied of the bulk material without tilting of the trailer or container.
If materials are left over following an unloading operation of the walking floor and plow, an operator such as a driver may have to enter the container to sweep out the material that was left behind, especially if the driver is hauling a different material on the next load as in most cases cross contamination of materials when switching between aggregate materials from load to load is undesirable. The expenditure of such time and effort is undesirable, and moreover, for safety reasons, it is usually undesirable to have drivers entering the trailer to clean them out.
It is desirable, therefore, to make improvements to conventional automatic unloading and cleaning systems of walking floor trailers so as to maximum the amount of a carried bulk material which is unloaded by operation of the system.